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…and it’s been astonishingly blatant about it lately. There’s never a shortage of life issues to ponder, but when events beyond my nose spiral out of control the issues proliferate. Pardon me while I overthink a few things…

ON DIETING: What’s the point? If I can improve my health, great. If I really do lose pounds, fabulous. I’ve done it, it’s a familiar circus, and I’ll likely do it some more times, but therein lies the problem – I’m a repeat offender. It doesn’t really stick, and for me it’s because it’s unnatural – I know what I like, and the minute somebody says I can’t eat that my body goes into rebellion. It’ll drop a certain number of pounds for me, but it’s merely biding its time until the stuff I really want comes back. Also, at this point I’m consistently ignoring all studies proving this or that food substance will kill me – I’m getting there anyway so let me enjoy my life on the way.

ON AGE SPOTS: It’s only a matter of time before the brown patches on my face that look like small continents merge to form a whole and make me look permanently tanned. Might be okay. Meanwhile I’m using apple cider vinegar like an astringent because it’s rumored to fade age spots, never mind that I smell suspiciously douchey for the first hour or so.

ON THE CURRENT CLIMATE: It’s a challenge to live every day in a heightened state of awareness – I’m as tired at night as if I’d been doing hard labor. It’s an accepted fact that stress of that kind is unhealthy long-term, so I take joy in being good to myself in as many ways as I can think of, and it helps. I hope you’re doing the same – life goes by quickly and there are no do-overs unless you believe in reincarnation, which is a whole other conversation…

That’s random enough for now – and you just realized you’ll never get the last five minutes back. 😄

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Thursday was amazing – from morning ’til night I stayed busy with stuff people all over the civilized world do every day and never think twice about. Rolled out of bed at 8:00, had some coffee, got dressed, slapped a cap on my wild head, and strolled over to the barbershop, a distance of half a block plus an alley. After all that dedication on my part, my girl Shelby wasn’t in yet, so I turned myself right around and trekked back home.

Took a shower and spent the morning writing at my computer. After Kim got home from PickleBall we had lunch at Five Guys, went to Target where only he went in, stopped at the dry cleaners, Kim again, and he dropped me off for my haircut, after which I walked the block and an alley home again. Played on my computer a while, did a load of laundry, policed some clutter. Around 3:00 we went south again to Cielito Lindo, which sits that one alley I mentioned short of the barbershop, for Margaritas, chips & salsa, and forbidden queso. We were home and entertaining each other on our own balcony by 5:00, and asleep early, as in by 9:30pm.

That was a big ol’ mess of trivia and why in the everloving did I bother sharing it, you ask? Only because, since no good deed (or day) goes unpunished I woke up at 3am in full-on fibro meltdown. To expound on the symptoms would turn this into a whine, just know that I paid big for the best day I’ve had in quite a while, and that this is the sort of price extracted from anyone out there with an autoimmune disfunction who’s bold enough to enjoy what’s in front of them once in a while. You can say I overdid it, but if you read back through and pick out the action words you can see that it was well-paced and carefully done and didn’t amount to all that much. At no time did pain tell me to sit down and shut up, so I rambled around in the sunshine behaving like a real person just for shits & giggles. The 3am message was “Hey, girl,” sounding nothing at all like Ryan Gosling, “you thought that regular stuff was for you. Haha, so sorry.”

The good news, because who can’t always use some, is that Friday was the only lost day this time, down from an average three. Tells me we’re on the right track with Ken & The Lymph Nodes, and that makes me happy.

The reason I’m taking the time to blog about this is that the thinly-veiled scorn that ends up out there on the backs of people who can scarcely spare the energy to deal with it is grating and I hurt on their behalf. Whatever people might say about me is none of my business, but ignorant digs at friends and family don’t go unnoticed, so I choose to fly my educator flag occasionally.

It’s all so simple – if you haven’t experienced or been diagnosed with an illness that for some reason annoys you in others then you don’t have a platform, so this is not your circus, it’s okay to wander off and take care a’ bidness, maybe contribute to the greater good through kindness or tolerance, something like that. Fibromyalgia is an invisible disease that affects 100% of the body, so you can feel really good about cutting people slack, in fact that’s your mission today should you choose to accept it.

*Don’t read past this point unless you’re in the mood for naked truth…

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How could a girl be anything but happy when a beautiful man plays guitar several hours a day in their shared space? That’s just silly to contemplate.

A potential unforeseen consequence of painting a silver head of hair with reddish-brown streaks (billed as mahogany) is that one could appear to have been beaten mercilessly about the head and shoulders with a flail. Not likely, but possible, and worth considering in advance.

Long overdue tasks like cleaning the screens on all your toys takes mere seconds once finally begun, but the existential lift it provides can’t be measured. Ah, those smooooth, silky, flawless surfaces. You must never touch them again.

Ridding one’s environs of prodigious amounts of needless accumulation is euphorically cathartic. If only it were a long-term high, but – sweet while it lasts.

Without the distraction of social media during every waking hour it’s surprisingly easy to pay bills in a timely fashion and keep a steady supply of clean underwear stacked in the dresser drawers. Who knew?

Also when you do three years’ worth of work in two days, you come face to face with the possibility that you could be a whiney-ass malingerer because look at what you can do if you really want/need to.

When you can’t get out of bed the next morning you remember why you keep a mental list of limitations, but it’s so worth it you don’t even care for once.

Saturday Trivia: My iPad is currently home to a library of 318 books, all of them quality and most of them acquired free or for a dollar or two on BookBub over the past five years or so. When space is at a premium but you can’t survive without books it’s the only way to go. Or, you know, there’s always the City Library. {Smacks self in forehead.}

When you play a Rubik’s Cube-like game on your phone during all those moments away from home when you’d otherwise be checking Facebook, you get pretty dang cagey at it. I think it’s called counterbalance. Or trading one addiction for another – yeah, probably that one.

There have been only a handful of weekends over the last twelve years when Kim hasn’t made his Saturday Breakfast, and in all that time, including this morning, the quality, flavors, and presentation haven’t varied except to get even better. Aroma, too, which is calling my name as we speak. Gotta go have some more of that slooow food with the love cooked in.

Happy Weekend to all of you. Be sure you’re making time work for you and not the other way around.

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Another beautiful Saturday morning in the neighborhood – Farmers Market is busy, #lfk is opening her arms to us as always, the sun’s shining, 67º and easy. Friends who are family have included us in their 3-Day Labor Day Blow-Out, so the day promises lazy fun around the pool and great food including BANANA PUDDING!!

The Official Saturday Breakfast that hasn’t diminished an iota in more than twelve years of Saturdays – always the best-tasting, most satisfying meal of the week – has been humbly savored. And now Kimmers is in his Happy Place, the one with the stove, putting together a big pot of beans & hotlinks for the Framily. The sun is in its heaven and all’s right with the world – we’d make every day look pretty much like this if it were in our power.

Turns out, and experience teaches us this, there’s bloody little we control, and there are watershed events as we roll through life that abruptly stop the momentum and make us take an accounting. Therefore, second, third, eleventh chances cannot be overrated, and spending vital chunks of the past week with my cherished baby sister has driven that point home as nothing else has in years. It’s never a bad idea to stop and take a look under our public face, down to the one we wear for our own use, and past that to the Real Us. A fresh face-off (see what I did there?) with mortality is an exquisite motivator to change what needs changing, fix what needs fixing, just DO it, now instead of someday.

To close out The Week That Was, we had an earthquake mere seconds after Kim took the sunrise picture. It was apparently 5.6 at its epicenter, 3.2 here, 235 miles northeast. Rattled things pretty energetically up here on the 4th floor…but after the earthshaking week behind us it was only an entertaining blip.

I hope your Labor Day celebrations will be earthshaking in all the best ways.

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Do you ever want out of your skin? You know, because you’re worn out from thinking all the thoughts that pile up in your brain like kindling, splinters poking and needling. Because the stuff held in by your skin hurts all day every day. Because someone you love is stressed and unhappy and you can’t fix it. Because the world isn’t kind and the slings & arrows extract their pound of flesh and energy every freaking day and you’re tired of the ugly. Because all the relentless hurt hurts so relentlessly. And you finally drop your guard and share some of the pain to make it feel less potent and you’re hit with the ice-bucket challenge – dispiriting to the max. Meanwhile, your heart flutters like a bird in your chest and you fully grasp why people drink and do drugs.

Yeah, me too, bubbie, getting out of this skin is Job 1 today; however, that’s apparently not happening, which leaves humor for toughing it out. What’s your antivenin of choice – deadpan, dark, ironic, satirical, blue, highbrow, slapstick, something else… what helps you get through the night? It would be a kindness to come share some of it with us – we’re dyin’ heah. Life is so simple most of the time that when it turns crunchy it’s really noticeable. The world is full of crazy-ass people who make me want to cry, mean-ass people who do make me cry, willfully-ignorant people who make me want to leave the planet – I don’t feel like seeing ANY of it today, boo-hoo.

So come share what makes you laugh. Robin Williams knows how to make the hurt better by sharing it, so he’s my go-to guy.

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